An instant classic sent to our local V:TES list. Oh, did I not mention that VEKN.NET has a poll on the future of Vampire: The Eternal Struggle? I haven’t mentioned a bunch of things, like my Kickstarter backings recently. Anyway.

** ** ** ** **

As I said on the forums, I don’t see the point of a VTESlike game that isn’t V:TES.

For all of the grief that CCGs get, including V:TES, V:TES is actually a good game. CCGs are a bitch to design and to expand and to manage. Magic may have hit on some cheat codes in that set rotation is a way to deal with mechanics bloat, plus having enough design and development resources to actually make the game work. But, a lot of CCGs either started off less playable or became less playable when they expanded.

Keep in mind that you can actually change some of the core rules and have the same game. Transfers can work differently, for instance, without removing the ability to play Undead Strength. You couldn’t remove the idea of superior disciplines or the idea that you have ranges/strikes.

Is combat a mess? Sure. Additional strikes are confusing as hell. But, remove “as about to enter combat” effects like Obedience and that reduces a step, remove a host of prerange cards and people can probably live with Carrion Crows and Torn Signpost without losing their minds, remove Immortal Grapple timing, Aim cards, first strike, Rotschreck, and this thing we like to call combat ends … and who knows?

I said on the forums that one reason I’d make most of the currently playable card pool unplayable in an overhaul is because I’ve played some games in the last year that had that old, Jyhad feel to them. People liked playing Jyhad. A fair number, by anecdotal “evidence”, stopped liking the game when it stopped feeling like Jyhad.

It’s amazing, but I still really enjoy playing V:TES. But, in numerous ways, I’m an exception as I don’t stop playing the games I play, no matter what I may think of them, until the fellow players are gone.

I can see enjoy playing a Jyhadlike game more than current V:TES, though. Jyhad was so much faster, so much more straightforward. I realize it was also much more broken. Weenies, fewer bleed defense options catering to an even more Dominated environment than currently exists, combat ends being a huge combat problem which was why Potence was so much more common are all elements that just rewinding the clock is not going to fix.

Oliver points out something that came up when we were talking about what to do for Brett’s demo decks at the con. The discipline mixes in the game are horrendously out of balance. This means either forcing Dominate on whatever clan that doesn’t have it, playing very very narrow archetypes, relying on P/J cards to not die, or the like.

Speaking of demo decks, other than the Toreador and Tremere, I kind of see problems with all of the Camarilla Clans in a teaching environment. Brujah – can’t defend pool. Gangrel – can build toolbox, but there’s no variety to the build. Malks – too easy to just bleed and ignore everything else. Nosferatu – midcaps don’t really do anything useful for you without Deep Song. Ventrue – I bleed, I vote, I bounce, I combat ends, but I don’t intercept because Second Tradition in a demo deck is weird and because I bleed, I vote, I bounce, I combat ends. Toreador have that mix of bleed, vote, combat, intercept without jumping through a bunch of hoops that shows off a balanced game. Tremere don’t have the voting prowess, but they bring an interesting combat element to a basic game where people don’t just combat ends or first round murder you.

Anyway, getting back to discipline combinations. Other than disciplineless Deflection for 5+ caps, just making Celerity and Potence do more out of your early sets would help immensely. Sure, Celerity now is kind of interesting with Resist Earth’s Grasp, but that’s a recent phenomenon. Potence still suffers from blah. Spoils of War is the sort of card that addressed a problem with how some clans just suck because of their disciplines, but it came 15 years later than it should have.

The thing about it is that when you clear out the chaff and the broken stuff (Govern, Conditioning, Voter Cap, Giant’s Blood, etc., etc. etc.), you can rebalance the game to where Malks and !Malks fight without equipment or Protean skill cards.

Will the player base put up with 75% of their collections, their Summon Histories and their Enkil Cogs, being not tournament legal? Very possibly not. Can you sell 5000 new players on playing this game about the Camarilla, Sabbat, and a few indie weirdoes that can take more than 75 minutes to play and requires at least three players but is kind of ridiculous with more than five? I have my doubts.

So, as much as what I want is a better V:TES, I do imagine that the only two things anyone will ever do is continue to bloat the existing game and/or put out “I Paradoxically Rage Your Fae Mummy” as something that hopefully doesn’t even try to pretend it’s related to V:TES.

I was going through a box of my stuff in a pathetic attempt to get the house more organized. Besides some ornamental mementos, there was quite a bit of gaming related stuff from when I was a Precedence Publishing volunteer.

In other words, from 1998 to 2000, the heyday of Babylon 5, Wheel of Time, and Tomb Raider CCGs.

There are so many miscellaneous things in that pile.

gencon ’99 and origins ’99 duty roster [sic]

I’ve only ever been to one Origins in Columbus. It was because I was so deep in the volunteering thing that I had as my volunteer blocks: Open Demos, Friday, July 2nd, 12AM-6AM; Open Demos, Saturday, July 3rd, 12AM-6AM; Open Demos, Sunday, July 4th, 12AM-6AM!!

I occasionally need to remind myself just how absurd my life has been, at times. I worked in San Francisco for a while. On Van Ness. Where we had parking!?! I was doing currency speculation in the ForEx market for a company long gone from that site. I didn’t have much of a commute when I was getting in at midnight and leaving at 6AM.

Apparently, at some point, the idea of being up in the middle of the night didn’t really bother me. Oh, how times change.

It doesn’t get any less weird for Gen Con: Friday, August 6th, 12AM-6AM; Saturday, August 7th, 12AM-6AM; Sunday, August 8th, 12AM-6AM.

While I recognize a bunch of names on the duty roster, there are also a lot of names I don’t recognize.

An email I sent after Origins ’99:

Disgraceful. Sam wins the West Regionals. Mike Calhoon wins the Midwest Regionals. Where were you all at the East and Southeast Regionals?

Origins: the other con. Attendance was probably light due to Dragon Con being the same weekend. I only played in the social tournament. Someone was actually surprised that Adira got up to 11 intrigue. Don’t know much about the constructed. The sealed deck final was one of the longest finals ever. It sounded incredibly amusing with We Can’t Allow Thats flying around. Eventually, the Minbari won?! Just shows you can’t expect everyone to be an expert. Lots more starters given away. Jeff Conaway and Walter Koenig were at the con. Walter was his usual cool self about autographs. The lines were very short because he wasn’t in the booklet. Psi Corps uncut sheets were available for viewing. Nice looking art.

Non-B5, Precedence, Origins stuff: Tomb Raider was on hand for demos. Wheel of Time is still being worked on. The 2nd edition Immortal booklet had suitably eyecatching art on the cover.

Gen Con preview: Walter will be back. He will be joined by Robin Atkin Downes (Byron) and Julie Caitlan Brown (who was born in SF and has been very cool). There will also be the official Lara Croft model. All the Precedence games will get a push, except Gridiron.

Question: Of the B5 stars, who would be most desirable as a Precedence guest at events?

Oh, not much from Gen Con ’99, except one of our local players won US Nationals to qualify to play Worlds in Germany. I might not crossregionally achieve at my CCGs, but there’s an argument I can make others better.

I found articles written by a couple of Babylon 5 players. Mike was local. I have his “The Fine Art of Murder: Winning With the Narn Seizing Advantage Deck” article. I have Merric’s “Understanding the Vorlons”, “Delenn Transformed and Ambassador Kosh”, “Winning with Diplomacy”, and other articles.

Why?

Well, at some point, I was an editor for a B5 CCG site. I didn’t try to edit Merric’s content too much, as one of the things with niche CCGs is that metagames are very different, plus he was writing to the beginner player, not for someone like me. A virtual pro, briefly ranked in the top 10 in the world before being crushed by serious players at the first Worlds. (Of the three CCGs I have been ranked in the top 10 in the world, … ah, nobody cares.)

Anyway, the main criticism I’d have of Merric’s articles is that his starting hands are so not what the metagame was like at that point. His starting hand choices were the sort of thing you’d see before Shadows only using cards printed long after. They would have been like 3 turns too slow, lacking starting agenda and influence gainers (Corporate Connections, Airlock Mishap) to accelerate to “let’s actually play the game” time around turn 5. What is the point of my bringing this up? Maybe I should do a post on B5 deck construction that is pretty useless to pritnear everyone.

I have draft versions of the Tomb Raider and Wheel of Time Rulebooks. I could go into this in more depth some other time, though why anyone would care is a good question. But, the single most memorable thing to me about the WoT Rulebook is what a total pain in the ass it is to put into writing how damage works at reducing abilities. It’s just so ambiguous in the English language unless you word it right, yet it’s the easiest thing to show someone. I could see how Shadowfist words damage and attributes, as it works like that.

I had a bunch of printouts for playtesting B5, TR, WoT. Was starting to toss them into recycle when I came across some for WoT and realized that they were for the unreleased Aes Sedai set. I don’t know where the files are for these playtest sheets, but I gots to reveal to the world the ancient mystery foretold by the prophecy and suppressed by the Illuminites. I mean, has anyone else who knew anything about the unpublished WoT CCG set ever provided any info on it? I don’t even recall much, as I think we were very early in playtesting for it and/or were playtesting other things at the same time such that it wasn’t as much of a priority. Well, and I was designing for B5 at that point.

I have a shocking number of tournament forms from B5 tournaments between 1998-2000. Again, the game wasn’t actually around that long. The intensity of my engagement made up for the brevity of it all.

I have Zeta Squadron/Legends membership newsletters. Looks like I only ever was ranked in B5 in one of them.

I tossed some checklists where I noted how many copies of cards I got. I have promotional brochures.

Just a very different experience than my current one, yet, it’s entirely possible that someone else is currently in that kind of world.

I certainly miss things from those days, though I could be so involved because I wasn’t as employed, so I certainly don’t want to go back to that sort of thing. Even if CCGs make money, that doesn’t translate into big bucks for people.

Should I rummage through and find my signed, embossed B5 cards and stare wistfully at the stars? Probably not. But, maybe, I’ll go hunt down some emails from those days and look to post more antediluvian mysteries.

However, next up in my plans is to talk about NPCs, maybe get into some !Nosferatu decks. Who knows? Some day, I might even get back to posting something about the L5R RPG, since that’s mostly what people read about on my blog. Actually, I tried finding out some info about the Saturday campaign and it doesn’t look like I’ll get anything more, so I have something I’ve been thinking of posting from that campaign, even though it won’t help anyone to build better characters, murder enemies faster, et al. Does tie into talking about NPCs, though …

** Interesting crossover discipline spread and nontrivial special but not bouncy enough.

#04: Anarch Convert [TR:V]
Clan: Caitiff
Group: any
Capacity: 1
Discipline: –
Independent. Anarch. When the convert enters play, you may remove him from the game to make a non-titled vampire you control anarch and either gain 1 pool or draw a card from your crypt.

***** Not Tupdog, not far from Tupdog, usable for any group. In the running as a possible second best crypt card in the game.

#07: Calvin Cleaver [TR:V]
Clan: Gangrel
Group: 4
Capacity: 3
Discipline: for pro
Camarilla. Calvin may add a blood to an anarch as a +1 stealth action. Once each turn, an anarch may add a blood to Calvin as a +1 stealth action.

** Hello, my name is “I have the most common disciplines in the game.” But, you can call me “The Filler”.

#20: Reverend Adams (ADV) [TR:V]
Clan: Ventrue
Group: 4
Capacity: 4
Discipline: aus PRE
Camarilla. During your master phase, you may look at the top X cards of your libary, where X is the number of Gehenna cards in play. Older vampires do not tap for successfully blocking Adams.

* I sound so good until you realize my drawback is harsh and that there’s no reason to merge me. I can let you look at the top card of your library, I can also be replaced by any of four other PRE 4 caps in group 4 alone who don’t have meaningful drawbacks.

* * *

Jack Drake is still someone I keep thinking of but have a hard time pulling the cards for. It’s just not clear what I want him to do that I can’t do without him.

Sent to the Babylon 5 CCG Rangers group, i.e. the volunteers group (not to be confused with the player’s group, the old volunteer’s group, the playtest group, or any of the other groups that got setup up near the turn of the century).

* * *

While we are on the subject of errata, I thought that it might be helpful to
share my definition of a broken card with you all. Here it is:

Any card or card combo that can win consistently in 9 or less turns unless
someone puts a card in their opening hand to stop it.

The main qualm I have with this definition is that there’s nothing wrong with consistently winning within 9 turns if every deck is that fast. 8-10 turn games where everyone has a chance of winning sound real good compared to the current length of many games. I’m not sure there is a good comprehensive definition. Some others that I’ve heard include:

Where X is some specific strategy, card, or group of cards, if you must play X or anti-X, X is broken. This works better in some situations. Unless you get quite broad in how you use this, I don’t know that it ever applied real well to B5. For instance, in the first Worlds, OAA would have made a good X, but anti-X wasn’t nearly as clear.

If a strategy still produces excessive wins even when players prepare for it, it’s broken. This, OTOH, has applied often to B5. For example, I’ve often seen a searched out Master of Darkness fail to stop GiC. On a more extreme level, Sheridan mark still could win after It Will Be His Undoing (put in opening hand) got played.

For individual cards, if the card goes into every** deck no matter what the deck’s strategy is, then it’s a candidate for being broken. A definition that applies well to B5 at times and not so well at other times. To modify it for B5, would probably have to add “and causes a significant increase in a player’s ability to win”. Meditation, for instance, is rarely called broken. Then, there’s a card like Trent.

** “every” being somewhat open to interpretation. Every Minbari deck still sounds like a possible problem. Every Gather Rebels deck doesn’t.

For multiplayer games, if there is a standard of deck strength in terms of how much effort the other players must expend to stop it from winning and a deck significantly exceeds that standard, then the deck is likely broken. For example, as this is rather abstract, if a standard tournament deck can normally be stopped by one player, assuming the player expends enough effort, and there exists a deck that can only be stopped by multiple players, then the deck is broken. An extreme would be if all other players did everything possible to stop the deck throughout the game and it still won more often than not, then it is clearly broken. Decks that come to mind that were above the standard historically would include early CoG, some military decks (depending upon time period).

Of course, if you have statistics, any deck that dominates tournament play is broken. Broken decks play broken cards as a rule, so there should be some card in the deck that can be pulled out.

“I’m not very tough. I cry a lot. And, the tears won’t stop flowing.”

* * *

Other than including one of my more memorable sigs, why now brown cow for this post? I was reading the only B5 CCG blog I know about (given that I haven’t searched for any others), babylon5ccg.blogspot.com

I pulled out my decks box to comment about opening hands. Two problems with that. First, most of the decks have slips of paper in them for playtesting one of the CCGs I was designing that never got close to being published. Second, I had a lot of opening hands that would have undermined my argument, so I don’t know what my comment should be.

Anyway, I started searching my sent email to see if I ever sent my Band of Brothers decklist out. This was for another blog post idea I had where I’d rehash an old topic – decks that fail to meet a minimum threshold of viability (aka nutpunchers). I ran across this email. This is relatively thoughtful compared to many of my emails to the various groups about things B5ish. I also don’t really have an argument against anything I said 13 years ago.

I also haven’t posted any classics (things I write to places other than here that I copy here, especially anything I wrote prior to starting this blog) for a while.

By the way, something that isn’t broken (per se) is anything I don’t like playing against. While The Unmasking is broken, it’s not because I hate playing against it, which I do. It’s because it hits on something this classic doesn’t – certain effects that break basic mechanics of the game are broken. This is an idiotic definition in that the whole point of CCGs is that cards break the basic mechanics of the game (“OMG, Glancing Blow prevents damage … that’s so broken.”), so you need more stuff in there like “Massive distortion of the game from common play.”, “On a global level and with no real ability to restore the game’s mechanics to the norm.”, or whatever.

Looks like the last constructed tournament report I did in 2002. Looking at some of the posts I made in 2002, I sure wonder why I thought people cared what I did that didn’t have to do with V:TES. Fortunately, now, I have a blog, where the whole point is to get off topic and post about things that interest me far more than anyone else.

I don’t get Rebekka in my initial crypt draw nor an Effective Management. Jim questions my comment that I’m going to die. No way to block, no way to bounce his deck. No more way to deal with Jeff if Jim dies. I thought it made sense. Anyway, Brian can’t stop anything and can’t get into enough combats, but Greg lays off of him for a bit to whomp on Jeff. Necessary as Jim is getting pounded, then gets ousted. I somehow find a Rebekka after much Blood Doll based bloat to stall Jim, then Jeff. I pitch all my combat but hold on to my bleed, so when Greg got down to 6, I went over the top. Brian couldn’t do anything, so he made no effort to defend his 1 pool. All that was left was whether Jeff would run out of cards or kill me. He didn’t quite run out of cards.

Gomi was on the defensive for most of the game. I bloated wonderfully. Brian got a better draw and bloated well with some backwards rushes that worked. Brad bled for 1 a lot. I tried going forward. Partial success, but a lot of defense in Randy’s deck kept me from finishing him off for far too long. Eventually, Brad ousted Gomi. A big bleed bounced helped me finish off Randy. Brian was some more work. By the time it was down to Brad and me, I was pretty much out of cards and Brad had lots of minions/permanents. Brad Haunting my Club Zombie hurt a lot in the endgame as that was one of my few permanents. I tried withdrawing. Didn’t work. We were low on time, but Brad ousted me with about 10 minutes left. Totally screwed me not getting the table win.

Final:
Seating position was everything, well, for me. The final just had awful interaction with Jeff and Jim both having decks that did nothing but go forward, Jim being unable to defend at all against Brad’s bleeds, Chris having no way to put pressure on Brad. I didn’t do jack to Chris knowing that my only chance was to bloat long enough to play for second. I should be more specific as to why I didn’t do jack to Chris as I knew I couldn’t block Jeff’s bleeds, so it wasn’t like I needed to stay up. If I actually hurt Chris at all, we’d fight, and any expenditure of resources – losing blood, going to torpor, etc. – on my part dealing with that would have likely hurt my bloating and kill me. Of course, Jim pounded Jeff, failing to oust because Jeff put Khobar Towers out and started nuking his minions (which I was all in favor of). Brad would hit Jim a bit. Chris tooled up. Brad ousted Jim and complained about how I wasn’t doing anything so left Jeff alive for a while to oust me. But, Jeff had too few minions left, so I wasn’t threatened. Eventually, Brad gave up and killed Jeff. Chris punked some of Brad’s minions, but otherwise, put no pressure. So, even if I could oust Chris, I figured I had little chance of winning. So, once Chris was basically out of cards, I had a completely different strategy. It was a two-fold plan to play for “second”. By going after Chris, maybe I could oust him as I still had 30 cards or so left to try and compensate for all of his permanents. But, even if I failed, I was hoping to beat Chris down to where Brad would sweep and I’d tie for second. I was also trying for half a VP for a while, but we were playing with no time limit or something, always a bad idea as it means playing differently than you would in other rounds.

People wondered why I was playing the way I was. Given the deck I was playing, the decks at the table, and the seating position, I was completely screwed. If I had won the previous round, I would have been high seed, which would have made all of the difference. If Jeff inserted to my left instead of my right (Jim was always going to be behind him and Brad behind Jim), would have completely changed my game as I could have ignored Chris, who would have died to Jeff or Jim, and work on Brad. Might not have gotten Brad as he was still a bleed deck with bounce behind a defenseless deck, but if I got him, I was set up well.

I pulled an Enchant Kindred probably for a Freak Drive. Not a good idea as the lack of bleeding power hurt every round. One problem I had in the final was that people thought I had more bleed, like multiple FoWs. So, somehow, I was supposedly a threat to ousting Chris when he got below about 10 pool. No, this deck just sucks, but no one payed any attention. Got to stop playing bad decks. They rely too much on other people recognizing that they are bad.

Just didn’t nail the metagame with these. More wakes than I needed. Didn’t need DT at all. I thought I left 6 TMs, but apparently not.

x1 Tasha Morgan

Just not enough of anything – intercept, bounce, bleed, ways to get bleeds through, combat. Used to have Razor Bats, but besides sucking, I don’t have room for more intercept. Could have done without the Delaying Tactics as there were no vote decks, but votes would have been hard to deal with. About the only thing the deck did well was bloat. I consistently outlasted or extended bleed predators. Kind of surprising that there’s only 5 BDs given how often they showed up.

I don’t think the problem was toolboxing, but that Gargoyle toolbox doesn’t get to use as many good cards as another toolbox deck might and/or has too many issues with the clans/vampires having such poor discipline crossover.

Not one of the most interesting posts to our local group I found while mining, but I think it brings up a couple of things and is relatively chronological. First, it gives a hint of the metagame in the Summer of 2002 and how it might compare and contrast with the modern metagame. Second, while not as bad in this post as others, when I read a lot of my old posts to this group or to the B5 playtest group, I sure sound incredibly arrogant and patronizing. I know I had much more of a “prove me wrong” mentality back then, where I just don’t really care anymore about the endgame of arguing over what’s good and bad (in V:TES), since I don’t see any endgame (i.e. changes made to the game based on my opinions).

* * *

… just one loser’s perspective.

So, we had the perfect tournament. Twelve people. I wasn’t playing. Then, Jim and Jason showed up. Then, we almost had the perfect tournament. Fourteen people. I wasn’t playing. Then, it all went to hell when everyone was convinced that we should start from scratch. Fifteen people. I was playing.

First Round:
Randy went first playing Lasombra/Giovanni. Ian Kemp went second with Gargoyles. Vincent, third, with what wanted to play like a weenie Presence deck but with bigger minions; it used Brainwashes, for instance, to slow its prey down. Jeff went fourth with Disguised Assault Rifles on the likes of Ellen Fence and Francois and lots of ways to draw cards. I went … fifth.

I probably didn’t transfer optimally for the situation. I saw Ellen, so I thought of how I would avoid being tapped for a while. I could have brought out Marconius, the most important vampire in my crypt, first, but I wanted to make sure I could drop Secure Haven on him before he got rushed and I didn’t know how rushy Jeff’s deck was. Also, after Randy brought out Gratiano, he brought out Pochtli, so I wanted to get Carlotta out before we ran into problems as our decks had tremendous superficial similarities.

Early on: Randy wasn’t getting much pressure from me and could bleed some; Ian was rushing in various directions but not having much luck; Vincent was decrypting and bloating; Jeff occasionally rushed someone; I had it all and had it right then, though, to survive Blurred Assault Rifles with combat ends and most amusingly Darkling Trickery, of which I played two in one combat, though I forgot I had a Saturday Night Special on Marconius and didn’t shoot Ellen for one at long range to empty her minor as that would have been.

Deeper into the game Randy and Vincent were able to put some pressure on their respective preys. Ian was getting Obedienced when rushing the invincible Gratiano. Jeff started looking backwards more intently after Vincent got some good bleeds through. My pool sucked as I got jack for blood management, but I drew wakes often enough to put some bleeds through without fearing sudden oust syndrome and Randy’s pool was fairly low. I got one turn before Ian would descend into the ousting abyss to put Randy down, but my lack of ability to cycle throughout the game meant I didn’t have the plus bleed everyone likely expected and reduced him only to 1 pool. Ian fell. One of Randy’s larger bleeds (3) got bounced to Jeff when he was at 4 pool, and contentiousness flared such that Randy stealthed it by which enabled Vincent to oust shortly afterwards. With time running out on us, I just went forward and ousted Randy. Vincent and I agreed that a withdrawal was in order. A stolen (from Jeff) Fragment would have aided going through the motions, but no one really cared to force us to do that.

Second Round:
Paul went first with his alternative vote deck. Joel was second with Gangrel Royalty. Jim went third with some Chimerstry based deck that didn’t end up doing much. I went … fourth. Alex went fifth with the latest version of his Eurobrujah deck.

Jim spent a bunch of pool without help from Joel’s Judgment: Camarilla Segregation. Fated to die or something seemed to be the motto of the day. Paul’s Gilbert got quickly Disarmed when he blocked Mr. Winthrop. My Julia got similarly torpor advantaged blocking Alex’s J:CS. Jim Suddened Alex’s KRCG and a Blood Doll (as I recall) while he tried to find a way to survive. Earlier, Jim Cursed Angus at the double inferior level, which didn’t have a huge impact. Paul had a vote problem with Alex getting out three Princes and Joel having four or so votes. Command of the Harpies on Donal passed as did Camarilla Threat which Paul immediately lost a pool to as he discarded. I got tired of having Alex around and didn’t mind having some more pool, so I ousted him but got Julia Archoned in doing so, which ended up hurting more than I expected as I couldn’t get someone I didn’t have in play when I decrypted. This gave Paul vote control which he used to take out Joel and Jim with Anarchist Uprising.

The two player showdown saw First Tradition and Camarilla Threat hurt us both while Paul’s Etrius got big bleeds through (with stealth) and my lack of drawing plus bleed saw, uh, a lack of getting big bleeds through, so I eventually failed to survive.

Final Round:
Vincent was fifth seed with 2.5 VPs. I was fourth with 3 VPs. Brandyn had 3 and a TW, I believe. Paul did as well? but won the coin toss? Chris went in as the first seed.

Paul inserted to my left. Brandyn followed Paul. Chris followed Brandyn. I went first.

I didn’t do much as I had Pentex Subversion played on my first vampire, which kept him from acting for a couple of turns and (in total) had three Brainwashes played on my guys. Paul’s votes started with Might of the Camarilla. Brandyn bled Chris like crazy. But, Chris bloated like crazy and put out some wee folk. Vincent bled me hoping for a quick oust, but I drew Deflections when I needed them for a change and I knew he couldn’t get through once I was able to block.

Eventually, I had stabilized and was trying not to put Paul down until he could do something fruitful. Course, my delaying meant getting Beatrice burnt by Protect Thine Own which only had two possible targets. Nevertheless, Paul had minimal pool and nothing useful to do. Brandyn was strong but spinning his wheels going forward as Chris just kept bloating. Chris eventually got out enough minions that Vincent was screwed. Vincent had been bloating and wasn’t a threat to me anymore, though was losing the ability to wall up. Chris ousted Vincent, and I figured some pool, a VP, and having Brandyn have a predator was useful, so I ousted Paul. From there, Chris simply had too many minions and too much pool for us to do much, and we eventually got ousted, I about the time Chris ran out of cards, Brandyn a few turns later as Chris had eight or so minions.

The point of the deck is to drop some Necromen to play Jar the Soul (at zero stealth, of course, cuz God forbid Shock Troops have any redeeming value) to tap out my prey so the real vampires can bleed for large amounts.

Here’s what I learned. There’s no way to overcome the supreme coasterness of Shock Troops. Until recently, I completely overlooked that they have -1 stealth on every action. Best guess that whoever posted to the newsgroup about using it for Protean agg rushers overlooked this as well as empty Protean dudes hunting at zero stealth will fall over and die leading to that most glorious of situations where you spent pool and used up master slots in your deck (this, of course, assumes the Shock Troops card isn’t Suddened) to have a bunch of them sit in torpor. BTW, I do have a fourth; I just couldn’t bring myself to play with that many copies. Every single time I had one in hand, I ended up discarding it. This deck doesn’t have enough bleed, which has something to do with putting in cards that a serious deck wouldn’t be playing. When I was writing it up in the ELDB, I was very close to ditching the stupidity, but I found some way to get the deck down to 90. I didn’t nail the metagame with the notable exception of Darkling Trickery (which isn’t saying anything really as the card is always useful to the Kiasyd) as I was constantly having problems with card flow. And, remember, every deck is better with ultrarare weapon hosers.

As promised. This even has relevance to a conversation I had last night.

* * *

Overheard at a game convention …

…
J: YG, you shouldn’t have tapped all of your minions on your last turn. Now, you can’t block my bleeds. For my first action, Ozmo does a Scou-ting Mi-ssion bleed!! You lose three pool YG.
YG: J, you’ve fallen into my trap.
J: What?
YG: While it’s true that normally I couldn’t block you because all of my minions are tapped, I play this card – Wake With Evening’s Freshness! Wake With Evening’s Freshness allows the chosen vampire to attempt to block and play reaction cards as if untapped. And, I choose Aisling Sturbridge … who attempts to block.
J: That’s a strong defensive card YG. But, you haven’t successfully blocked my attack yet. I play Swallowed by the Night to give Ozmo plus one stealth. Now my vampire has one stealth and yours has zero intercept. I guess my attack gets through and you take that three pool loss after all YG.
YG: Not so fast J. You forget that Aisling Sturbridge can also play reaction cards due to the Wake With Evening’s Freshness. I play Enhanced Senses for intercept …
J: Then, I’ll play Cloak the Gathering for more stealth.
YG: J, you should have let me finish announcing the terms of my card before playing that Cloak the Gathering. Aisling has superior Auspex, so I play Enhanced Senses at superior. At inferior, Enhanced Senses adds only one intercept. At superior, it gives plus two intercept to the reacting minion! You’re going to have to raise your game to another level if you want to beat me J.
J: Plus two? That means Aisling’s intercept matches Ozmo’s stealth, which means that Ozmo will get blocked.
YG: That’s right J, unless you have more stealth.
J: No … The attack is blocked. We go to combat.
YG: Do you have any prerange cards J?
J: No.
YG: Neither do I. Do you maneuver J?
J: I don’t maneuver. I strike …
YG: Wait a moment J. I play Apportation at superior! At superior, Apportation provides my minion with a maneuver. I maneuver to long range which means that Aisling Sturbridge won’t take any damage from a hand strike.
J: Well YG, I wasn’t going to strike with hands, anyway. I play Dodge! A strike: dodge means that Ozmo won’t be affected by Aisling Sturbridge’s strike. As I’m sure you were planning to play a strike effective at long range, I think I win this one YG.
YG: You’re right J but not about winning. I *was* going to play a strike effective at long range. I still am! I play Theft of Vitae, a strike that can steal blood or life at long range.
J: But, it won’t do anything because I played Dodge. Seems like I’m not the only one who makes boneheaded rookie mistakes YG.
YG: So, you think it’s a rookie mistake J? It isn’t and you’ll soon see why.
J: Uh, okay YG, whatever you say. For my next action …
YG: Hold on J, this combat isn’t over yet.
J: It isn’t?
YG: No. During the press step, I play Apportation at inferior. At inferior, Apportation provides a press only usable to continue combat. If you don’t press to end combat, combat goes another round. Do you press to end combat J?
J: No. I guess we go to another round of combat. I have no prerange cards.
YG: Nor do I.
J: I don’t maneuver.
YG: Nor do I.
J: I strike …
YG: Just a minute J, I have a card to play before strikes are declared. I play Blood to Water at superior!
J: Blood to Water? What does that do?
YG: Blood to Water, in this case, burns blood off of the opposing vampire. At inferior, it would burn three blood off of Ozmo. But, I’m playing it at superior, so it burns five blood off of Ozmo. Because you moved one blood from Ozmo to your pool during your master phase using the Blood Doll you played on Ozmo earlier this turn, Ozmo is now empty of blood.
J: Ouch! I don’t have another Dodge, so I strike with hands.
YG: Very well J. Now, to complete the combo, with this card I just drew replacing the Blood to Water I just played, I play Walk of Flame! at superior!!
J: Walk of Flame! That does aggravated damage, doesn’t it?
YG: Yes J, it does. Walk of Flame at inferior wouldn’t have made a difference as the first point of aggravated damage would only send Ozmo to torpor and the point of damage from a hand strike would have done the same. But, at superior, Walk of Flame does two points of aggravated damage. Because your vampire is empty, the second point of damage will burn your vampire! I’m sorry J, but Ozmo is … destroyed.
…

… After this action was completed, the remaining three players searched their libraries and collections for Garrote cards and proceeded to messily and slowly slit the throats of YG and J.

Everyone, trust in the heart of the cards [especially your ultrarares and watch an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! sometime if you haven’t to watch a show about playing a CCG]. Jim, archive if you want.